“Genevieve Goes Boating”

There is a short film playing on a screen in the lobby of Building C in Fort Mason every day. It’s plays from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., and it’s going to be there until May 27th. It’s the debut film of Bay Area photographer Lucy Gray, a 17 minute short called “Genevieve Goes Boating,” and if you’re anywhere in the vicinity, take a minute, or 17, to look in on it.

It is a fictional short, narrated by Tilda Swinton, about a little girl who learns boating from her father and then, when her parents split up, ventures out into the sea in search of him — or in hope that he’ll go searching for her. It has a framing device that’s set in the modern world, but mostly it’s told like a fairy tale, and with the actors standing in front of drawn flats, the look reminiscent of early silent film.

But the sentiments very much of our era. And though everything about the look and style is meant to draw you into a place of comfort, the movie’s meanings and intentions are sophisticated — it’s very much a film about the strains of growing up in a broken home, specifically the strains of being a girl and no longer having daily access to the father. At the same time, it’s not a despairing piece. It’s about becoming an adult.

Anyway this is a lovely debut, worth seeing and worth thinking about.

You might even take 34 minutes and see it twice. It’s free, by the way.